ADAPTATION part 2: "THe Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"

I finally saw the film version of Douglas Adams' "HHGTTG." It was originally broadcast on BBC radio, then it was made into books, then a record album, then more books, then a TV miniseries, then more radio shows and now a movie. Every version had direct involvement by the author, Douglas Adams. The film version was in script phase when Adams died. However, I had every reason to expect the best, as Adams had been involved for a long time in getting this movie made, and the directors assured us that they would absolutely do the books, et al, justice.

Holy crap, was I misled. The previous incarnations were chock full of satire, clever writing, meaty science fiction and character development. This film was a whiz-bang, slap-dash, slapstick abomination. I'm not saying this because it was different from the books. I'm saying this because it was completely misguided. All the jokes stemmed from visual gags, instead of from the writing. Zaphod is supposed to be a cool, hepcat-ish smoothie. That was where his character's humor came from. This one was somewhat a smoothie, but mostly an idiot. I had heard they were going Mos Def, a black rapper to play Ford Prefect. Fine, the character doesn't need to be white and Mos is supposed to be a great actor, so bring him on! Mr. Def is a mumbling plank of cardboard in this movie. Marvin was originally depressed, but abusively condescending. This one was just sitcom depressed and irritating. At least they gave Trillian something to do. The previous versions had her dooing nothing of note. This one had her doing dumb things, like falling for Arthur.

Overall, I felt like the producers took the original radio shows and books, tossed them in a pot, boiled it down to a small putty-like paste, and then reconstituted it with too much water. The movie was fast and visually fun, but there was practically no story. They hit on each moment and then WHIZZZ! They went on to the next part without developing it enough to let us care.

This movie sucked. Maybe the DVD will have an hour of deleted footage that willl redeem the story as a whole, but I doubt it.